Picnic Panic

Picnic Panic

Problem: Create a “Paradox” themed game for submission into the UofT GDDC Summer 2026 Game Jam.

Theme: The game will revolve around the ant on a rubber rope paradox. 

Technology: The game will be built within the Godot engine using GDScript. 

One essential piece of technology is the, somewhat, realistic simulation of a rubber rope. At any point in time the global speed of the ant is a summation between the ant's constant speed relative to the rope and the added speed from the stretching of the rope. 

Mechanics:

There will be a rope. The player will be the one “stretching” the rope. By pressing the space bar, the player will stretch the rope in a way that simulates real elastic physics (see technology section for more).

There will be an ant NPC that is moving towards the right of the screen at a constant rate. The player will be presented with the task of preventing the ant from passing the end of the rope by extending it to keep the end of the rope away from the ant.

Should the ant pass the end of the rope, a failure state will be reached where the player can no longer stretch the rope and will have the option to retry the game. 

To stay in line with the ant on a rubber rope paradox, it is not possible to reach a victory state. 

Story and Aesthetics:

The main problem the story and aesthetics of this game will address is player motivation. We have the technology and mechanics to recreate the paradox; however, we must create an endogenous reason for the player to want to try and stop the ant from reaching the end of the rope. Learning that the game is impossible to win will only elicit emotions within players if they had the desire to win.

Given the game enters a failure state when the ant succeeds in reaching the end of the rope it is the central antagonistic force within the game. To reinforce this we will make the story about defending food from a pesky ant, a relatable theme to those who have had a house infestation before. 

The aesthetics will be picnic based. The rope you are stretching is a picnic blanket to protect food within your basket from the ant. The setting will be outdoors to justify the presence of a picnic basket and a pesky ant.